{"id":5255,"date":"2009-08-14T11:56:15","date_gmt":"2009-08-14T16:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5255"},"modified":"2009-08-14T11:58:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-14T16:58:00","slug":"hot-gear-friday-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5255","title":{"rendered":"Hot Gear Friday Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

With yesterday’s passing of Les Paul, there was really only one option for Hot Gear Friday today.<\/p>\n

I wrote this piece <\/a>about 18 months ago:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s a ’57 Gibson Les Paul Standard, one of perhaps the three most sought-after electric guitars in the business. I recall reading that they went for $279, brand new out of the Gibson catalog, during Ike’s second term. When I first started playing guitar during the Carter administration – before <\/em>the guitar collectors market went insane – they were already going for a stellar $3,000; thirty years later, some of them fetch mid-to-high five figures.<\/p>\n

The tiger-stripe lacquer finish and the brick-heavy body create an afternoon’s worth of sustain. The action, like most Gibsons, is nice and low; your fingers just race<\/em>, which is disconcerting to a Fender player like me. Even thirty years ago, the whole assembly – aged nicely even then – yielded a sweet, round, weathered tone that was the tonal equivalent of James Earl Jones’ voice; it had credibility just because of how it sounded.<\/p>\n

I played a ’57 once – not a tiger-stripe, but a Gold-Top, its first cousin – that a friend of the bass player in my very first band had picked up ten years earlier for maybe $100, before the collectors value became established. I’d been playing guitar for maybe two years; I had a long way to go. And yet strapping that bad boy on was like sitting in an F1 Lotus after learning how to drive a combine; it’s hard not to feel like a guitar hero playing a ’57.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Standard is the iconic representative of the line, but “Les Paul” is to guitars as “Europeans” is to people; there are many different varieties, some of them very dissimilar.<\/p>\n

There was the Custom…:<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…which added a pickup (usually) and a bunch of extra ivory, and switched to a mahogany rather than maple top, giving a mellower tone (which has translated to lower values on the collector market).<\/p>\n

There’s the Deluxe…:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…originally with either mini-humbucker or P90 pickups, which didn’t really take off.<\/p>\n

The Les Paul Studio…:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…which was a high-end “just the basics” version aimed at studio musicians, omitting the ornamentation and binding but going high end on the body construction and electronics.\u00a0 Playing a Studio is an interesting experience; it handles like, well, a high-end Les Paul.\u00a0 But there’s something about guitar marketing; while it probably played the same as a Standard, there was something that just felt<\/em> – emotionally, not physically – downmarket.\u00a0 There’s something about the whole “Les Paul Experience” that’s as much look as sound.<\/p>\n

Of course, I always preferred them to the Juniors…:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

who certainly have their adherents (Billy Joe Armstrong, Paul Westerberg), but always felt thick and unresponsive to me, a Fender guy.<\/p>\n

With all the mythology based around the Les Paul, it’s hard to realize that Gibson was actually losing market share to Fender and their lighter, less-expensive Stratocaster.\u00a0 To the threat, they responded with the SG – basically a lighter, thinner body with a double-cutaway body:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I never cared for them – I always liked my Ibanez knockoff better – but they did <\/em>sell like hotcakes.\u00a0 Looking at video clips of seventies bands, SGs were everywhere.
\nBut it’s the Les Paul that is the rock and roll icon – from the sixties,<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…the seventies…
\n<\/p>\n

…the eighties…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…nineties…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…well, you get the picture.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With yesterday’s passing of Les Paul, there was really only one option for Hot Gear Friday today. I wrote this piece about 18 months ago: It’s a ’57 Gibson Les Paul Standard, one of perhaps the three most sought-after electric guitars in the business. I recall reading that they went for $279, brand new out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hot-gear-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}